When flash flooding struck last year, it submerged most of breath.

It county members of the Russo Volunteer Fire Department found themselves performing water rescues and helping people trapped inside their homes.

And they continue to answer the call of those in need in their county.

We were used to flooding.

You know, flooding happens often, but nothing is significant this bad.

I mean, yeah, we'll go, you know, day in and it floods in and it box the main road and we can't get out and can't do anything.

But to me this significant is has never happened before.

Cell phones were blowing up and I knew that that we was in trouble.

I knew that we had people that was trapped and there was 12 in an upstairs attic.

They was there, I want to say, about a day and a half and you see water coming at you.

I mean, you can only imagine what I'm thinking of that.

On the third day of the flood, we we'd done 18 rescues.

We ended up getting five Black Hawk choppers to land here in our jurisdiction.

And every one of them had swiftwater boats.

You know, it was it was crazy.

The water was still big at that time.

And but what he was doing, what we could we knew that we had to get people help.

We was able to get the one that was trapped to safety.

You know, I hate to even stop and turn around and think back at it because, you know, it brings up so much emotion and it's just hard.

It's just hard, you know, because it could have very easily been and we lost a lot of people in the county.

They lost their lives.

And and to only imagine that we could lose more is, you know, is pretty it's pretty emotional.

When the water receded, we did start distribution.

We delivered 50 roughly 50 bodies throughout the county in general, not just the roofs on your station, but we went throughout the county and delivered that many days.

Food, water, cleaning supplies we had has 15, 16 trucks going out at one time deliver.

I'm trying to help my fellow man and help my neighbors, and we're trying to help everybody that we possibly could.

And still to the bay, you can see in the building here that we're still doing distribution.

We don't turn.

Up.

I think even before the floods, this area was in need of, you know, just food supplement and cleaning.

I mean, everybody in the area is on a fixed income, a lot of a lot of people and virtually below the poverty level.

So it was a great need even before the flood hit and a lot of light on on the community and the needs it had.

And that's why we keep it going to a lot of people back on their feet.

But then there's still some people that hasn't got back on their feet.

We've 4500 people, I think 14 campers that came in and we've got 20 people that needed a place to live.

The need is the need is real.

The need is not as great as it was after the flood, that there are still needs in the community.

That's why we keep it going.

And and we saved sometimes 80 people a day comes through here.

You know.

Every every day we see that, you know, that it's slowly coming back.

And we knew that it was going to be a long process.

This is not just going to happen overnight.

This is not going to happen in a year.

We hope we hope that we continue on the right road and we and continue to improve daily.